IN the winter of 1321-22 Edward II turned the tables on his enemies. The nation rallied to his support and he was able to overthrow the rebels in Kent, along the Welsh frontier, and in the North.' It would seem that their quarrels, their manifest selfishness, and their suspected dealings with the enemy had finally discredited the baronial opposition. Edward seemed to have gained new confidence in himself and his cause and, with the support of able ministers, to be on the verge of re-creating an effective monarchical regime. The fact that he rapidly squandered his new found popularity is well known, but the causes have hardly received sufficient analysis. Such varied sources of opposition have been canvassed as resentment at the ambitions of Despenser in Wales and the incompatibility of the Statute of York with baronial ideas about parliament.2 That these factors were at work cannot be doubted. To contemporaries, however, perhaps the most notable causes of discontent were Edward's failures in Scotland and in France, together with those oppressive levies which could only have been justified military success.3 In this article, the writer wishes, on the basis of some hitherto misinterpreted evidence, to re-examine the relation between some of these levies and the deposition-accession parliament of January-February 1327. Military considerations figured in both the deposition of the old king and in the first legislation of the new reign. This is hardly surprising inasmuch as the body which deposed Edward II was in all essentials the same as the one which promulgated the new laws. Our appreciation of this identity increases to the extent that the proceedings of deposition in the week of 13-17 January are accepted as the work of the quasi-parliamentary clerus et populus rather than of ad hoc assemblies in London.4 Now, among the charges against Edward, military incompetence loomed large. In one chronicler's account, it occupied pride of place. The Pipewell Chronicle records, under the date 13 January, how by the common consent of all, the archbishop of Canterbury declared how the good king Edward when he died had left to his son his lands of England, Ireland, Wales,